When a Single Story Has a Thousand Sides

Rendition

Meryl Streep and Alan Arkin in a scene from Rendition, which was directed by Gavin Hood.Credit
Sam Emerson/New Line Cinema

Given the tenor of political discussion these days, it is inevitable that someone with a loud voice and a small mind will label “Rendition” anti-American. (But look! A quick Internet search reveals that some people already have, many of them without even bothering to see the movie.) It is, after all, much easier to rant and rave about treacherous Hollywood liberals than to think through the moral and strategic questions raised by some of the policies of the American government. But it is just these questions that “Rendition” tries to address, in a manner that, while hardly neutral — it may not shock you to learn that the filmmakers come out against torture, kidnapping and other abuses — nonetheless tries to be evenhanded and thoughtful.

Everyone in the movie, that is, receives a sympathetic hearing. The North African police chief who supervises the beating and water-boarding of an innocent prisoner, the American intelligence official who puts the prisoner into the torturer’s hands, the senator who hesitates to intervene. They may be villains, but they see their actions as justified, something they have in common with the conscience-stricken Central Intelligence Agency analyst and the reluctant jihadist who are their adversaries.

“Rendition” may be earnest, but it is hardly naïve. Rather, it tries to be thoughtful and respectful of complexity while at the same time honoring the imperatives of commercial entertainment. It has timely issues and serious ambitions, and it also has movie stars — Reese Witherspoon with a huge pregnant belly! Meryl Streep with a Southern accent! Jake Gyllenhaal with sad, sleepy eyes! — as well as young romance, breathless chases and violent explosions. Honestly, what could be more American than that? (Now might be the time to note that the director, Gavin Hood, is from South Africa. His last film, “Tsotsi,” won the Oscar in 2006 for best foreign-language film. The screenwriter here is Kelley Sane.)

So “Rendition” is a well-meaning, honorable movie. Which is not to say that it is a very good one. It suffers especially from a familiar kind of narrative overcrowding. Mr. Sane and Mr. Hood frantically weave together plot strands in an effort to visit as many ideological, religious and emotional battlegrounds as they can, and the result is a degree of combat fatigue, as well as information overload. The filmmakers obey the current rule in Hollywood that states that a picture with large themes and a one-word title must also have multiple, chronologically de-centered storylines. (For your consideration: “Crash”; “Syriana”; “Babel.”) But they don’t handle the complications very well, and try to pull off a third-act surprise that is less a plot twist than a logical unraveling. You may spend the last 15 minutes rubbing your eyes and scratching your head in puzzlement rather than fighting back tears.

But up until that point each story, taken on its own, yields some touching moments and canny insights. At the center of the hubbub is Anwar El-Ibrahimi (Omar Metwally, who stole a scene in “Munich”), an Egyptian-born engineer who has lived in the United States for his entire adult life. On his way home to Chicago from Cape Town, Anwar is snatched at the airport in Washington and “rendered” into the brutal penal system of an unspecified North African country where a suicide bombing has recently killed, among others, a C.I.A. operative. Back home Anwar’s American wife, Isabella (Ms. Witherspoon), unable to find out what has happened to him, tries to work her only government connection, an old boyfriend, Alan Smith (Peter Sarsgaard), who now works on the staff of one Senator Hawkins (Alan Arkin).

Meanwhile, back in North Africa, the police chief, Abasi Fawal (Igal Naor), when he isn’t torturing Anwar in a dank, shadowy dungeon, is worrying about his oldest daughter, Fatima (Zineb Oukach). She has been hanging around with Khalid (Moa Khouas), a poor, soulful artist with a sad smile, a motorbike and connections to the terrorists. And Douglas Freeman (Mr. Gyllenhaal), a C.I.A. analyst whose Bogart- (or perhaps Clooney-) esque dissolution was interrupted by the bombing, begins to have second thoughts about what Fawal is doing.

Freeman and Fawal conduct an argument about ends and means that is mirrored by the debate between Smith and Corrinne Whitman (Ms. Streep), who runs the rendition program with unflappable conviction. The tussle in Washington is more pointed and emphatic — “Americans don’t torture,” Ms. Streep hisses, while Mr. Sarsgaard hisses back about due process and the rule of law — but the one in North Africa has a more pungent atmosphere and juicier acting.

Mr. Naor, with his shiny head and bushy eyebrows, is as emphatic in his gestures and expressions as an actor in a silent movie, with a gruff, rolling baritone that makes you glad that “Rendition” isn’t one. Mr. Gyllenhaal, for his part, tries his hand at minimalism, conveying his character’s ethical quandary by moping and mumbling. The two of them are an oddly captivating team.

For her part Ms. Witherspoon retains her stunned, steely resolve until the script calls upon her to start screaming, while Ms. Streep savors another chance to embody the chilly self-confidence of power. Ms. Oukach and Mr. Khouas, as the young, star-crossed lovers, have little to do but regard each other with wounded, wide-eyed longing; this is not a movie with much need for ingénues.

And yes, it could have used more subtlety, a lighter touch, a more disciplined narrative. But all its clumsy efforts are toward an honest and difficult goal, which is to use the resources of mainstream movie-making to get viewers thinking about a moral crisis that many of us would prefer to ignore. Of course it’s disappointing when such efforts don’t succeed, but I wouldn’t want to live in a country where filmmakers never tried.

Directed by Gavin Hood; written by Kelley Sane; director of photography, Dion Beebe; edited by Megan Gill; music by Paul Hepker and Mark Kilian; production designer, Barry Robison; produced by Steve Golin and Marcus Viscidi; released by New Line Cinema. Running time: 120 minutes.